One Hundred Years of Uncertainty
or
I Just Give Up

I'm always looking things up and discovering that they're not quite as simple as I'd heard, and that's OK. Live and learn. But yesterday I just wanted to throw up my hands in despair. I go to Wikipedia, seeing what it had about the 18th century for a project I'm doing. I assumed that I had, as a starting point, a general idea of when the 18th century was. I would have told you that it ran from 1700 to 1799. Or 1701 to 1800? I can never keep that straight. Roughly in that range, at any rate.

But no. Right off, the entry said "historians sometimes specifically define the 18th century otherwise for the purposes of their work."

What?

"For example," the entry said,  "the 'short' 18th century may be defined as 1715–1789, denoting the period of time between the death of Louis XIV of France and the start of the French Revolution while the 'long' 18th century may run from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the battle of Waterloo in 1815 or even later.^"

How do you like that! The short 18th century! The long 18th century! For example! Even later! And Luke, guess what? Darth Vader didn't kill your father! Check it out—Darth Vader is your father!

The mind reels, and nothing is certain. We see through a glass, darkly. I just give up. I really do.